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SCOOP: National Institutes of Health ordered by Trump admin to enact 'immediate and indefinite' travel suspension

"If staff aren’t able to travel, clinical trials will likely have to be put on hold," a source tells The Handbasket.

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NIH Lobby (Wikimedia Commons)

On Wednesday employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received a distressing notice: All travel would cease immediately. 

Foreign or domestic, urgent or not, a memo sent Tuesday evening to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) CFOs and other operational officials clearly outlined the new policy to be communicated to staff. Employees were alerted the following morning.

In a copy of an email from NIH’s CFO Glinda Conroy to employees provided to The Handbasket, Conroy relayed that she and others had received a memo from the HHS Senior Travel Official “directing all travel be suspended immediate and indefinite.” The email was shared by a current NIH employee who preferred to remain anonymous out of fear of professional retribution.

These were the bullet points included in Conroy’s email to NIH staff:

SUBJECT: Immediate and Indefinite Suspension of All Travel

  • Effective immediately, sponsored travel for HHS personnel is frozen.

  • Future travel requests for any reason are not authorized and should not be approved.

  • Travel is only authorized for the return of those individuals who have already departed on official travel. However, this exception is only for the traveler to the original point of departure.

  • Employees from the Indian Health Service are excepted from this suspension.

  • This notice will remain in effect until further notice.

Travel is an essential part of the NIH’s work, the source told me. It’s necessary for overseeing clinical trials, planning future ones, ensuring trial sites are equipped with proper computers and machines, and meeting with community partners to make sure their needs are being met.

“Unfortunately if staff aren’t able to travel, these trials will likely have to be put on hold,” the NIH source told me. “Telecommunication capabilities have gotten better, especially after Covid, but it’s not the same as being there in person. A lot of the sites are in areas of the world that are more difficult to travel to, so communicating electronically won’t do much good.”

Staff regularly travel to Uganda, South Africa, Peru, Japan, Ireland, Spain and others to engage in ongoing projects.

The NIH staff learned more details Wednesday afternoon via another email (which was not an official department memo.) They found out OMEGA, the travel agency contracted to book reservations, is being cut off from making any new reservations moving forward. It’s unclear if they’ll be automatically canceling reservations already in place. Staff also learned they could attend conferences virtually, if that was an option—but only if there isn’t an additional cost. And they were informed that any public presentations at conferences or meetings must now be cleared by a presidential appointee.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday night that the Trump administration, “has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts.” The announcement impacts the NIH, as well as the FDA, CDC and HHS.

There have been reports of official meetings in progress on Wednesday being canceled after the communications directive went out. Graduate student Evangeline Warren was attending the second day of a two-part NIH virtual workshop when it abruptly came to an end.

“They were in a middle of a presentation when organizers interrupted the presenters to let everyone know that due to the directive the remainder of the event was cancelled,” Warren told me in her personal capacity and not representing the views of the NIH or her academic institution. “And then they ended the Zoom.”

The workshop was, ironically, “for early career researchers to learn more about NIH funding structures and engage in professionalization activities.” Instead of receiving live feedback on presentations, participants were told they’d now receive feedback via email.

“The health agencies are charged with making decisions that touch the lives of every American and are the source of crucial information to health-care providers and organizations across the country,” the Post wrote of the communications directive, but obviously applies to the travel directive as well. As the nation continues to recover from the COVID pandemic and new health threats loom on the horizon, our medical research institutions have never been more important.

Multiple NIH officials did not respond to The Handbasket’s request for comment. Two other sources with knowledge of the situation confirmed the existence of the travel suspension. I’ll be updating this post if and when knew information comes to light.

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